RAC refusing refund

floart

On 15th August £78.99 was deducted from my account by the RAC for annual breakdown cover. I had received no renewal forms whatsoever to tell me how much this years membership would cost me. On the 16th I emailed them via their web page and received an auto response stating that someone would contact me within 5 working days. Nobody did. After a 2 week holiday I again contacted RAC by email, received the same response but no contact again.

On Tuesday I emailed the CEO of RAC and received a reply from customer service stating that they were looking into what had gone wrong. I responded by saying that I wasn't interested in what had gone wrong, that I wanted my membership cancelled and a refund.

Yesterday my membership was cancelled BUT.... wait for it.....I can't have a refund because it was cancelled outside their 14 day cooling off period! They are telling me that even though the money was deducted on the 15th August, my breakdown cover was actually renewed on the 19th July although, as I have said, I never received any renewal paperwork.

Any ideas as to a way forward with this one? Thanks

OddballJamie

Give them a call and explain the situation. Email is far too easy to fob people off.

spacey2012

Write a LBA, they can either have your money and provide the service, or refund it.
No court in this land will allow them both.

floart

Thanks for the advice.

That is my main grievance with the situation, that they consider it acceptable to cancel the membership AND keep the money. At no point was I told that this was the case until after it was cancelled.

floart

This is the email received from RAC customer care today. As I said, I did not receive any renewal paper work or membership card and so had not been made aware of the new cost until it was debited from my account.



Case reference: xxxxxx

Firstly please accept my apologies that I could not reply to your additional comments last night, I was only in the office until 16:00.

Whilst reviewing your further comments I must state straight away that this does not change my final decision in relation to your complaint.

Although you correctly state that your annual premium was deducted from your bank account on the 15th of August 2013, your policy actually renewed on the 19th of July 2013. For clarification, your membership has renewed on the 19th of July each year following it's inception in 2009.

Upon taking out the membership you requested the payments to be collected on a 'Preferred Collection Date' (PCD), of which you set at the 15th. This is a request that we can accept when membership is paid for on a annual basis. Due to the PCD (15th) being before the anniversary date (19th) of your membership, we have to collect the payment in the following month.

Taking this into account, the 14 day cooling off period starts from the date of renewal (19th of July) and therefore would have ceased on the 6th of August, some 10 days before your initial request to cancel the membership was received. This is noted within our Terms and Conditions.

Furthermore, you have stated that you did not receive the renewal paperwork I referred to in my previous correspondence. Whilst investigating this I am confident that the paperwork left our offices on the 5th of June and was issued to you at '10 Darlington Close'. We do dispatch thousands of documents on a daily basis and whilst we take every reasonable measure to ensure they reach their intended destination, I hope you can appreciate that we cannot take responsibility once they leave our premises.

Upon reviewing our records I note that renewal paperwork has been issued to you around the 5th of June since your membership commenced. I do not believe it to be inappropriate when I say that you would have been aware of when the membership was up for renewal (based on you completing the renewal process over the years previous) and you were entitled to make contact with us should you have not received the renewal paperwork.

Whilst I do offer my apologies once again for the delay in cancelling your membership, I would like to reiterate that we will not be providing a refund as your request was received outside of the cooling off period.

Yours sincerely

xxxxxxxxxxxx
Membership Customer Care

T 0800 912 6270
E membershipcustomercare@rac.co.uk

If you need to write to us, please use this address:
Customer Care, RAC, Great Park Road, Bradley Stoke, Bristol BS32 4QN.

floart

He states that he is "confident that the paperwork left our offices on the 5th of June". Being confident does not mean that it happened, just that he can see that it was generated and that for the vast majority of time it then is sent out and arrives.

He goes on to say "whilst we take every reasonable measure to ensure they reach their intended destination, I hope you can appreciate that we cannot take responsibility once they leave our premises". No, I don't appreciate that you have no responsibility once paperwork leaves your office.

He then makes the assumption that I should have been able to remember based on previous years when the renewal forms appear and that I could have contacted them when they didn't arrive. Unfortunately receiving breakdown service paper work isn't a particularly memorable event and as such I had no reason to believe it was either due for renewal or that the paper worked had usually arrived!